Sharp Architecture 2.0: How are we going to get there?

Now that we have published our 2.0 road map, several people have asked us how are we going to get there. Simple, one step at a time.

One step at a time

We have previously blogged about Templify (here and here) being the way we are going to deliver a S#arp Architecture solution. That was step one for us, so you could say that we are already starting to deliver 2.0. Our next steps will be as follows (subject to change)

Create an initial 2.0 release that includes (v1.7.X)

Convert solution and projects to Visual Studio 2010

Convert all projects to .NET 4.0

Reorganize the solution structure for the solution template (moving to a Who Can Help Me based folder structure)

Add documentation (blogs and wiki) on how to properly setup the Spark environment

Include the new Plugin architecture

Add documentation (blogs and wiki) on the new Plugin architecture

Support for NoRM / MongoDb

Support for Azure

Create the 2.0 release (v2.0.X)

Final bug fixes

Update all documentation

Add samples via Blog posts

Update Northwind

Update Who Can Help Me

Start creation of 3rd sample

All of this is subject to change based on the needs of the community / the team.

Conclusion

As you can see, we have an ambitious schedule a head of us. The team and I are really excited about what we have planned and cannot wait to share it with everyone. Some of it is very exciting, like the Plugin architecture and alternate data store support.

S#arp Architecture 1.6.5 will be the last stable release until 2.0 is released. The interim releases will all be listed as Alphas or Betas and should only be used in production if YOU are comfortable with it. If you are not or need to wait for a stable release, please wait for 2.0. For each release, we will also provide another Templify package. If you want the full source, you can download it from GitHub.

@Vladan - Internally none of us really like Razor. MS had the opportunity to enhance Spark and make it greater, especially since Louis is an asp.net team member. Instead the choose to re-invent the wheel, again, and in this case not for the better.

I personally do not like the Razor syntax, I do not believe it actually cleans up the views over the web forms view engine. I am sure MS will be wildly successful with it as it has the backing of MS.

In the end, its only our samples and the default Templify package that will be using Spark. If the end user wants to make a Razor Templify package, I am sure others would love to see it.

Really looking forward to 2.0, I've used the Who Can Help Me structure on a couple of web projects now and its worked really well. That and all the other features are really going to make an excellent framework even better.